Small internal combustion engines are used in a variety of devices including, but not limited to, chainsaws, lawn mowers, weed trimmers, all-terrain vehicles, wood splitters, pressure washers, garden tillers, snow blowers, or other devices. A small engine is often started with a pull cord rather than a key. The user pulls the pull cord to rotate a recoil pulley and thereby start the engine. The engine may be stopped in a variety of techniques. For example, the user may lower the throttle to a point that insufficient fuel reaches the engine. The user may let the engine run to allow the engine to eventually run out of gas. The user may overload the engine to force shutoff. For example, a lawnmower pushed into heavy grass quickly may be overloaded to the point of causing the engine to cease operation.
Finally, the small engine may include a manual kill switch that allows the user to immediately stop the engine from running. However, challenges remain in the simplification of kill switches and integration of kill switches with other controls of the small engine.